Well I don't think ME4 is better than the original trilogy. Sorry, but even if there are improvements in some areas, it has a few huge steps back in other areas and it doesn't have stuff previous games had. For example - Garrus. I just don't see any person in ME4 that can reach his status. Okay, Addison could. 😛
Anyhow, I've played through the game twice so I'll take a pause from it (Expeditions 2 will be released in a few days). When I finished the game for the first time, I shared my opinion on RPGwatch, and second playthrough didn't change it (faces got fixed but I never cared about that), so I'll quote myself as a feedback:
https://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1061444010&postcount=2248
superb:
- combat
- crafting possibilities
- ending made easier or harder depending on your choices through the game
- e-mails protagonist receives, sidestories on terminals and logs
- visuals of galaxy and explorable areas
- not possible to fastrun the game in one afternoon (normal dif.)
- sound effects
- references to original trilogy (button pushing on Kadara, Cerberus in a few side missions, Liara's audio logs, etc)
thumb up:
- hidden stuff and puzzles (although easy, and I'm not talking about 20 sudoku)
- space pr0n exploration although rewards should have been better
- flirting
- Apex HQ works on emulators
- The Art Of ME:A does not disappoint
- was afraid jack of all trades system will stink, but no you can't be Skyrim master of everything
stuff improved compared to ME2, ME3 and DA3:
- no cutout story/setting critical content sold as DLC
- DLC (deluxe version) relevant only to MMO audience
- MMO rewards symbolic in campaign and don't guarantee the best outcome
- Mako returned and thank god no N4S carracing idiocy
- no reason to spam sonar constantly
- no instarespawning bears
- no Bioware Points scam!
not bad, but should have been much better:
- inconsistent writing, not as bad as generally suggested though, it's "good, bad and ugly"
- tons of quests and sidequests, not all are a quality over quantity though
- cryo pods system has level cap and some of pods' bonus are crappy
- sidekicks are hardly memorable
- sidekicks banter tainted with breaks on trashmob respawns or Sam's POI-s alert
- too many unfixed annoyances that proper QA would notice (example: tendency of corrupt autosaves)
thumb down:
- facial animations, while there is a logical reason, EA should have funded it with more $
- loadscreens, loadscreens everywhere instead of fasttravel between roamable planets:
----- Kadara loadscreens at big doors, inability to freeroam without landing on it's port
----- just like Kadara, Nexus port area used as a loadscreen to other Nexus areas
- unskippable cutscenes
- no F5 on PC, saving anywhere outside of combat disabled in main story missions
- grinding is toned down, but it still exists
- longterm romances again feel pathetic ("friends with benefits" option is okay)
- sidekicks AI in general, sometimes "frozen" hostiles/friendlies AI
- disproportional (mutated?) human bodies
- music, what music, where is music spectacle?
- default film grain on and subtitles off, no option to disable motion blur, console command needed to make a screenshot
unforgivable catastrophes:
- mining minerals with Mako
- roguelike randomly generated task objectives
- UI (weaponswitching circle stinks, menus are a mess, 3D map rotation not possible, etc)
- hair!
I said that once I started playing this game I just couldn't stop.
8/10
Sorry if I sound too harsh there and if moderator feels some words should be changed on EA answers, please do edit them, I won't object.
The only thing I find superb, for a personal classification, is the amount of potential to explore.
